I have used my own best Eight of Twelve choice of these images, below, to illustrate ... E I G H T B U C K Y I D E A S T O S A V E T H E P L A N E T A N D Y O U R S A N I T Ythat Patricia Ravasio has published in her True Story • The Girl from Spaceship Earth •

You’ll find the author's blog at BuckyIdeas.com. Please visit there to read about Buckminster Fuller's IDEAS for today and for news about upcoming events and books.

FORM FOLLOWS IDEA examines the work and ideas of influential designers Ralph Ball and Maxine Naylor. Their reflections and propositions provide a refreshing and provocative approach to design, touching on issues such as craftsmanship, modernism, and the role of nature and commercialism in design. Ball and Naylor's work explores ideas of space beyond the physical object. Their concern with cultural and social values is manifest in the form and (dis)function of their designs and appropriations of everyday objects, such as chairs, lights and shelving.

FORM FOLLOWS IDEA features their approach to these objects through cultural, ecological and visual narratives. As such, their book provides a playful yet critical re-evaluation of familiar forms and typologies.

"Rugged textured cable pipes ran over my head at a train station in New York, creating a trance-like, frightful pattern," says Gautam Kamat Bambolkar. "They ran from the edge of the entrance to an infinite end. It looked nothing less than a scary man-made cave."

Humans are falsely conditioned by the notion of scarcity promoted by Charles Darwin and Thomas Malthus. The idea of survival of the fittest sets up an us-versus-them mentality. If we believe there is not enough for all, overconsumption and greed are natural results. Only by embracing abundance and setting out to prove there is enough for all can we achieve Bucky’s overriding objective, “To make the world work for one hundred percent of all humanity in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological damage or harm to any individual.” In other words, whether we think we can or think we can’t, we are right.

Hanqing Qu's image was taken at Malaysia's National Mosque. "When the sunlight sprinkles into this building, light and shade meet each other in a dreamlike scene," he says. "It reminds me of the film called Inception."

Cocooned in our clothing, homes, cars, and offices, humans have become detached from nature. Reconnecting and realigning requires that we return to nature as often as possible and spend as much time within nature as we can, sleeping outdoors, sitting under trees, going barefoot. Realigning with nature’s design principles also requires weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. This is humanity’s most critical task. Trust that you are part of something bigger than your conscious mind can comprehend.

In a 1972 Playboy interview, Bucky predicted that a true real-time democracy was on the way. “One day soon,” he said, “we will be able to click a thing on our wrist to say ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it,’ and that will be our vote.” Bucky’s ideas generally came about fifty years in advance of reality, which means real-time democracy should arrive by about 2020. Considering recent political events, another Bucky thought to ponder is this: “When something is broken, don’t try to fix it. Create a new model that renders the old one obsolete.” Bucky said successful global air traffic control is proof that we can cooperate despite our differences. “You may ask how we are going to resolve the ever-accelerating dangerous impasse of world-opposed politicians and ideological dogmas,” he said. “I answer, it will be resolved by the computer. While no politician or political system can afford to yield understandably and enthusiastically to their adversaries and opponents, all politicians can and will yield to the computer’s safe flight-controlling capabilities and bring all humanity in for a happy landing.” Surely there will soon be an app for that.

“The future of humanity rests upon individual integrity.” How can an individual be more powerful than any corporation or government entity? Only the individual has total freedom to act on passion and principle. Humans have always unknowingly affected all of Universe by every act and thought. Realistic, comprehensively responsible, unselfish thinking does absolutely impact human destiny. Bucky often expressed this with his trim tab analogy. A trim tab is a tiny flap on the rudder of a boat. Although very small, it is the only thing that changes the direction of even the most massive ocean liner. Know that you are that trim tab, he often said; know that individual integrity is the most powerful energy on earth.

"This historic theatre is built in a typical oval shape, with the stage on one end and multiple floors and balconies all around the rest," says photographer Linda van Slobbe about this theatre in Bar-le-Duc, France. "This one has beautiful decorations."

Man knows so much but does so little. Bucky wrote this advice in 1970 to a ten-year-old boy who asked whether Fuller was a doer or a thinker: “The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done— that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors imposed by others on the individual.”

This image by Robert Cassway is part of a larger series called "The Vanishing West" about Fresno, Montana, USA. "This photo shows the ravages of time and weather on a building that was left to decay by benign neglect, after the families that lived in Fresno moved away," he says.

Humanity must qualify to survive. For this to happen, the time will come when humans will have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from a class two (entropic or selfish) evolution into a class one (syntrophic or cooperative) species. Thereafter, we will begin to make all the right choices for all the right reasons. Stay tuned to your own stream of consciousness, so that you can continue to grow in your syntrophic capacities. Focus on your own conscious evolution, and on the evolution of your own consciousness, and you will be helping humanity evolve to a higher level.

We live in an age that rewards specialization, believing it to be logical, natural, and desirable. Yet specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion, and has resulted in a disregard for big-picture thinking and responsibility. Bucky called himself a comprehensive anticipatory design scientist. Whether you look back at the great captains of ships at sea or at today’s modern CEOs, you will see that those who rise to the top to direct and manage others are those whose knowledge is comprehensive. They know a little bit about everything.

Our survival depends not on political or economic systems but on the courage of individuals to speak the truth and go along only with the truth. Our future depends upon our courage to express what we know and feel is the truth and on our ability to do this with kindness and compassion. Our greatest vulnerability lies in the amount of misinformation and misconditioning available to humanity. These mistruths are one of the greatest obstacles we must overcome.